Inaugurating the Crystal Stair Award

The Alumni Association and the Board of Overseers of the School of Social Work have created a new prize, the Crystal Stair Award, to recognize "natural social workers"volunteers and professionals from any discipline who have "worked passionately for social justice and the elimination of prejudice and oppression," as the School defines it.

The Award is named for the central image in the Langston Hughes poem "Mother to Son":

Don't you fall now--
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin'
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.*

The award will be inaugurated at a reception Wednesday, April 16, honoring four recipients--Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund; C.B. Kimmins, executive director and chief of staff of Mantua Against Drugs; and the New York-based attorneys Jeffery D. Lobach and Craig T. Trebilcock, who have provided pro bono advocacy for the past several years on behalf of Chinese refugees from the freighter Golden Venture.

The reception will begin at 5 p.m. in the Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue. Attendance is limited and tickets, which begin at $125, must be purchased by April 8. For more information, call 898-5518.